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Spring 2004

Features

Mount St. Helens: The perfect laboratory :: It is impossible to accept the immensity of Mount St. Helens and the effect of its catastrophic 1980 eruption unless you are able to stand beneath the enormous crater on the pumice plain and listen to John Bishop talk about lupines.

{ WEB EXCLUSIVE–Gallery:Mount St. Helens :: Photographs of John Bishop's research and the volcano. By Robert Hubner}

Lonely, Beautiful, and Threatened—Willapa Bay :: Willapa Bay is the largest estuary between San Francisco and Puget Sound. It boasts one of the least-spoiled environments and the healthiest salmon runs south of Canada. It produces one in every four oysters farmed in the United States and is a favorite stop for tens of thousands of migratory birds. And it's in trouble.

Extreme Diversity—in Soap Lake :: Soap Lake is surrounded by dark shores, sheer rock walls, a primeval landscape. Its waters have long been thought by some to cure certain maladies. It is also home to strange, hardy organisms that live nowhere else.

Keith Lincoln, Barn Builder :: Over 25 years at Washington State University, alumni director Keith Lincoln built many things, including friendships and a place where alums can go to sit in the shade.

Late history professor, chairman was popular with students, faculty peers

Raymond Muse became a teacher at the urging of his father, a
farmer in the Ozarks, who didn't want to see his son spend the rest
of his life "looking at the hind end of a team of mules."

During more than three decades at Washington State University,
the history professor earned "favorite teacher" status from
thousands of students. Faculty peers praised his leadership. His
tenure as chairman was the longest in the department (1956-79).

Muse died October 28, 2003 in San Diego after a long illness. He
was 88.

His teaching career began at age 18 in a rural one-room school,
not far from Marshfield (Missouri) High School, where he had been a
champion debater. The school board adjusted its school year so he
could spend part of the year attending Southwest Missouri State
University, where he graduated in 1938. He completed his master's
degree (1943) and a Ph.D. (1948) at Stanford. His master's thesis
was entitled, "The Constitution of Provincial Massachusetts." His
dissertation evaluated the work of William Douglass, a physician
and historian in colonial America.

He joined the Army in 1942, and married Alberta Baldridge on
Easter Sunday 1944 at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Muse was a
traffic analyst and cryptoanalyst in Asia, primarily in Delhi,
India, until World War II ended. Then he taught at Southwest
Missouri State before completing his doctorate at Stanford. He
joined the WSU Department of History and Political Science in 1948.
By 1956, he had become chair of the newly formed Department of
History. By the time he retired, the history department was ranked
among the top 15 percent in the U.S. The department had seven
professors and offered courses in U.S., Latin American, European,
and Asian history when he was named chair. By 1979, the department
had grown to 22 faculty members and two lecturers.

"Ray had a national reputation among colleagues who knew him as
a 'consummate' department chair, thanks to his ability to know all
the buttons to press when he needed a new desk, a promotion for a
department member, tenure, or whatever," said long-time colleague
Ed Bennett.

Muse played a major role in the establishment of the WSU Faculty
Senate and the creation of the Asian studies and American studies
programs.

"Ray's strong suit was the ability to cast a rosy glow on the
direst conditions or the gloomiest prospects and make a person or
an entire department feel good about themselves," offered David
Stratton, Muse's successor as chair. "He was a 'human
engineer.'"

Muse's sense of humor was legendary. Not only did it appear in
relations with colleagues, but it also enlivened his classes.

C.J. "James" Quann, WSU registrar emeritus, was enrolled in
Muse's American History class in the spring of 1951. It was a
period when President Truman was being widely criticized. Quann
remember Muse predicting, "You students mark my words. In due time,
history will prove that Truman was one of the best president this
country has ever had."

Muse loved teaching, particularly the introductory U.S. history
course.

"That's where the freshmen were-and potential historians," said
Muse.

"There will always be a place [job] for top history graduates .
. . It's quite appropriate for historians to go into
communications, journalism, government service, and many other
places where they should have been going all the time but didn't
because they loved to teach. And that would include me."

Muse served as a state committeeman for the Democratic Party. He
was a fervent supporter of civil liberties and free speech,
demonstrated best perhaps by his testimony in the landmark John
Goldmark libel trial in 1964.

The eighth floor of Orton Hall, a student residence, and the
history department office in Wilson Hall, are named for Muse.